Harvesting Amorphophallus titanum seeds

I was very excited to harvest Amorphophallus titanum seeds yesterday! It’s something very few people in the world have the chance to do. This is a very rare plant and when it blooms it attracts international media attention. We are fortunate to have some specimes of this plant at our greenhouse and when it blooms, we take it to the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas, CA for everyone to enjoy. When they have this plant on display, they have record attendance.

This last time, when our plant was blooming, another at the Fullerton Arboretum was producing pollen (talk about sync!). So they sent us some pollen… we pollinated our flower and a few months later I’m harvesting seeds of this rare plant!